h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Thank you, those ingredients sound promising. Can't remember the last time I used fennel seed and what for. Might have been something with lamb



Weather wasn't good Friday and Saturday but managed 8190 steps yesterday and 9938 today so average still above 4200

I have also recentlymade a simular stew, soup, using lamb neck with fennel bulb, onion, garlic and red lentils.. with fennel seed too.. a splash of oozo, pernod, or simular would prob have gone well too in that, if I had any
Over 9000 steps today, about 4 miles.. spot my metric ingredients, but imperial distances? I use metric for my body weight too mostly now, but not for height

Our pound has been exactly 500 grams since 1839, but the young don't use it anymore. I confuse half my greengrocers when I ask for a pound of something, lol.

It is said that Americans will never fully convert to the decimal system because they will never accept a foreign ruler

LOL


Yeah, the relationship the US has with the metric system is long and strained.

I got into an argument, a very stupid argument with online eedjits, young ones at that, who insisted that metric is currently the standard for the US because our units are now based on metric standards, for example, an inch is officially 25.4 mm.

I wish I could have explained the difference between a standard and a definition, but I was just flummoxed. I take it personally because in the '70s there was a concerted effort in the US to switch to metric. I was taught metric in grade school more than I was taught imperial. There's even still a bit of highway in Arizona that exclusively has metric distance signage. Our cars had both speedometers that indicated both MPH and KM/H. Then in 1982, Reagan, abolished the Metric Conversion Act of 1975. The stubborn old fogies won.

Let's not forget the incident when two parties working on a space probe or something like that had not agreed on decimal or imperial with the result that their combined effort vanished (crash-landed on Mars, I think?)

Cost a lot of US dollars it did - in particular for screw up

Mind you we still use inches and feet, mainly in the building industry I think.

And since many cars and machines come to us from overseas we have to adapt.

In my many years working with typography I used points and ciceros and what follows from that, but they probably don't do that anymore anywhere, except in working museums and places that reconstruct old writings etc.

In Germany inches are still used for bicycle sizes (26", 28" etc) and for pipe diameters in plumbing. As ~jwf~ used to say: "Go figga"

I think plumbing is alk metric in the UK, well the plumber fitted a new 35MM gasket or seal in our boiler today..
Walked 3.5 miles today, and got about a dozen hosital appointments.. most of which I cant attend, and none of which say what they are for.. shall spend tommorow phoning hospital..

with that

I will receive my first vax against hell fire tonight. Had planned to walk there and back but forecast looks awful

I think I have figured out how to attend my video hospital appointment tommorow. It had an inaccessible or just wrong link. still no idea what the appointment is about, it may be a dietition or a dietitition as they call themselves in their EMail.. so part of cardiac rehab.

LOL, I googled dietition and Ms. Google asked did I mean dietitian whereupon it gave me this:
"Which is correct dietitian or dietician?
At the request of the international dietetic community, the International Labour Office confirmed the dietetic professionals, the official spelling is DIETITIAN. Although dietician is a variant spelling of dietitian, dietitian is most commonly used three times as much as the c spelling."

Anyway finally got mu Shingrix at the pharmacy which was around 25 pounds cheaper than the offer I got from a company owned by doctors who can't seem to rip enough money out of patients

This American sympathizes.

Thank you.
Most health care is paid with our taxes but for some strange reason spectacles and dental work along with a number of other stuff - like Shingrix - is not. I will never understand why. It affects our gross national income if people have to call in sick - and poor teeth health is the cause of many a sickness. So our nation would most likely benefit if at least dentists and their work were paid also.

Pretty sure I would be dead several dozen times over if free health care didn't exist here.. or just broke..
My video app earlier was cardiac rehab, a group educational session about cardiac medication.. not entirely relivent for me, but bits were.. mainly boring though, an online page with the information would be easier for me..

Maybe the older vaccine, I think it's called Zoster, is covered. Shingrix is new so it's likely much more expensive and there are no generics.


One of these days soon, I need to take a closer look at my medical bills this year and make a call to my insurer and figure out why so many weren't paid fully. I've seen the phrase "exceeds plan coverage" many times this year for things that were covered in the past.

Also, I'll need to call my hospital and ask why it looks like I was charged over $17000 for an MRI and a CT scan. According to their website, the total for both should have been only about $2000. I've been getting these scans every 6 months following my most recent surgery and Gamma Knife Radiosurgery®. (aka stereotactic radiosurgery. You'll have to imagine how expensive that was because I don't know as it was covered by insurance a couple of years ago.)

I've paid my $2500 deductible, and I'm fairly certain I've paid well beyond my $5000 maximum out of pocket expenses as well.

Luckily we joined a private health insurance company while we were still reasonably well. It pays some of the bills from opticians and dentists plus medicine that is not fully covered by our NHS. My family would certainly have been bankrupt had we not been insured

Blimey, those are the costs just for scans.. I must have hundreds over the last 30 years, CT, MRI and PET CT. Plus DXI, ultrasound etc I even had a CT scan in the maternity dept, when a scanner broke down in oncology..
5000 steps today, too wet out for a 2nd walk.

Yeah, those scan prices are scary

I read years ago that stuff like a hip replacement costs three or more times in the US than what we pay here. I wonder if we should invite a certain kind of tourists based on that. Maybe we already do?

Add to this that a hip replacement in a private hospital adds to our gross national product. Same thing in a public hospital does not!

This was pointed out by a very clever politician from our far left. In spite of his political views he was highly respected by all his colleagues in our Folketing (legislature). When he left politics the conservative PM was quoted for saying something like "there goes half of the intelligence in this parlament".

The guy was a nuclear physicist when he was first elected. When he left he realised there was no way he could catch up with the newest in this field. So he studied law instead. Passed the exams in no time of course. Later he became, among other things, head of Denmark's public radio's documentary group.

He is now 88 but still sharp as a razor and still writes books about politics and law and such. He was on a panel discussion I attended two years ago. Calm and well-considered and in good physical health.

Enough about that, time for a walk

We seem to have lost all vestiges of electing proper intelligent politicals here.. to the extent there is no one and no party left I activily would vote for.. so can only vote against, by tacticle voting
10500 steps today.. plus dropped more pain meds.. on few enough pain meds, I allowed myself a glass of port may have a pint in the pub Sunday..

Fortunately, I received good news yesterday. An old friend, who has apparently been in an induced coma for some time due to meningitis, is waking up. Can't talk yet but is irritable and wants food and a scan shows his brain is intact. It is of course a gigantic relief for everyone involved